Mentalization

Mentalization refers to your ability to recognize your own and others’ mental states, and to see these mental states as separate from behavior. Mentalization includes being able to think about thoughts, emotions, wishes, desires, and needs in yourself and other people, and to see that these internal events may have an impact on the actions that you and others take, but are separate from those actions.

Some experts believe that the symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are a result of deficits in the ability to mentalize. They propose that the capacity to mentalize is learned in early childhood through interactions between the child and caregiver, and that if the child-caregiver relationship is disrupted in some way, development of mentalization is interrupted. Mentalization-based therapy for BPD targets mentalization ability.